Murder of innocents a lost cause

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The London bombers represent no mass uprising, no expression of
popular will, writes Paul Sheehan.

It is almost exactly 10 years ago that two young men, Boualem
Bensaid and Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, members of the Algerian Armed
Islamic Group, planted a series of bombs in the Paris Metro rail
system.

On July 25, 1995, one of their bombs exploded in the
Saint-Michel suburban railway station. The home-made device -
explosives and nails packed into a gas bottle - caused horrific
injuries to dozens of people. They also planted devices at two
other stations and tried, unsuccessfully, to derail an express
train. Before they were caught and jailed for life, they had killed
or injured more than 200 people.

The pattern is clear. For more than 10 years, civilians have
been targeted indiscriminately in great numbers. In each case,
Islamic psychopaths harvested as much carnage as possible. In each
of these attacks, people were killed or wounded in their hundreds.
This began well before George Bush was elected president or Tony
Blair sent troops to the Middle East.

The murder sect is not going away. It's regrouping. It's
metastasising. But the magnitude of the casualties and shock
achieved in London on Thursday has to be weighed against the
minuscule number of murderers it takes to cause such disruption. In
Washington in 2002, a single gunman (and not a very bright one,
with just one accomplice) was able to terrorise the great imperial
capital for months. A single cunning bomb-maker could do the same
in Sydney or any other big city.

The London bombers represent no mass movement, no popular
uprising, no expression of popular will. The Islamic world may have
a shortage of good governments and democratic freedoms, and public
opinion may still be fed a diet of state propaganda, gossip, rumour
and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but the massacre of innocents
is proving as repulsive to most people throughout the Arab and
Islamic worlds as it is everywhere else.

In terms of winning the hearts and minds in the Middle East,
despite the enormous unpopularity of the American occupation of
Iraq and support for Israel, there is ample evidence that the
tactic of murdering civilians is backfiring.

The statement posted on the internet on Friday announcing the
murder of the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq said everything we need
to know about these extremists: "We, al-Qaeda in Iraq, announce
that the judgement of God has been implemented against the
ambassador of the infidels. Oh enemy of God, Ihab el-Sherif, this
is your punishment." You can't reason with this. Or mediate. Or
rehabilitate.

This time, however, the executioners did not show the murder of
the ambassador on the internet. The posting of decapitations on the
internet has also stopped after it generated widespread revulsion
within Iraq. This terror campaign also failed to prevent a very
large turnout when the Iraqi people were finally given a chance to
vote this year.

In the West, the bombings are a disaster for those who have
fixated on the incarcerations in Guantanamo Bay. Most Western
governments will now do what their electorates want them to do,
which is strengthen the state's powers to identify and constrain
Islamic medievalists. Our dilemma is that these people use the rule
of law, freedom of association and civil liberties to wage a
long-horizon war against the rule of law, freedom of association
and civil liberties.

Yet moral vultures - the same people who were as deafeningly
silent about the jackboot oppression of the Saddam Hussein era as
they were as deafeningly outraged that Saddam was removed by force
- have begun to swoop onto the London carnage to claim this was a
consequence of the invasion of Iraq. This argument encounters the
immovable fact that more British people died on September 11, 2001,
and large attacks on Western cities were going on long before the
invasion of Iraq.

Although the al-Qaeda brand has proved resilient, since Osama
bin Laden achieved global celebrity in 2001 most of the major
developments in the Arab world have gone in the opposite direction
of what bin Laden's faction wanted. The region is absorbing more
structural change than any other part of the world.

In Egypt, the war waged against the state by the fundamentalist
Muslim Brotherhood has ground into insignificance, accompanied by
widespread abhorrence of the tactics used by the jihadists.

In Algeria, the civil war between Islamists and the military
government, which cost more than 100,000 lives, has ended in defeat
for the fundamentalists and public disgust at their massacres.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban government which imposed a
medievalism that shackled women, brutalised dissent, suffocated
freedom and sponsored bin Laden's mercenaries was routed by
military intervention. A painful national reconstruction
continues.

In Iraq, an onerous and sometimes shambolic reconstruction is
going on despite a war over rebuilding Iraq's increasingly valuable
oil reserves, which can amply finance national reconstruction.

In the United Arab Emirates, an enormous construction boom and
nation-building is ongoing under a moderate, pro-Western
government.

In Oman, the moderate, reforming government of Sultan Qaboos bin
Said has achieved a model of social stability and economic
prosperity.

In the Gulf nations of Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, the first
elections have been held and women allowed to vote.

This year alone, in Iraq, 8 million people braved a widespread
terrorist campaign to participate in the first national democratic
elections. In Lebanon, the almost 30-year occupation by Syrian
troops was ended by a grassroots democratic revolt and national
elections. In the Palestinian territories, a moderate leadership
has turned from violence to negotiation and attacked systemic
government corruption. And in Kuwait, women were finally given the
right to vote and run for public office. Three weeks ago, on June
20, the first woman cabinet minister was sworn into office.

The London bombings may dominate the year's headlines, as
intended, but in the larger mosaic of the Middle East, the process
of modernisation appears more powerful than the cult of death.